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Chocolate Peppermints
Melt a little fondant and flavor it to taste with essence of peppermint; leave the mixture white or tint very delicately with green or pink color-paste. With a teaspoon drop the mixture onto waxed paper to make rounds of the same size--about one inch and a quarter in diameter--let these stand in a cool place about one hour. Put about a cup of fondant in a double boiler, add two ounces of chocolate and a teaspoonful of boiling water, then stir (over hot water) until the fondant and chocolate are melted and evenly mixed together; then drop the peppermints, one by one, into the chocolate mixture, and remove them with the fork to a piece of oil cloth; let stand until the chocolate is set, when they are ready to use. 5 figs, 3 or 4 tablespoonfuls of water or sherry wine, 1/2 a cup of English walnut meats, Powdered sugar, Fondant, 3 or 4 ounces of Baker's Premium No. 1 Chocolate, 1 teaspoonful of vanilla.
Remove the stem and hard place around the blossom end of the figs, and let steam, with the water or wine, in a double boiler until softened, then add the nuts and chop very fine. Add powdered sugar as is needed to shape the mixture into balls. Melt the chocolate, using enough to secure the shade of brown desired in the coating and add to the fondant with the vanilla. Coat the fig-and-nut balls and drop them with the fork onto a piece of oil cloth or waxed paper in the same manner as the cherry bonbons. These may be dipped in "Dot" Chocolate instead of fondant.
Two candies have run together on this page: the peppermint creams described in the first paragraph, and a fig-and-nut bonbon whose ingredient list and method follow. Read them as separate recipes.
- FondantThis means poured sugar fondant — cooked sugar syrup worked until it turns opaque and creamy — not rolled fondant sold for covering cakes. Commercial dipping fondant or fondant patty base works; rolled fondant will not melt smooth.
- Melting fondantFondant is warmed gently over hot water, never over direct heat, and should not be allowed to get hot or approach a simmer. Overheated fondant loses its fine crystal structure and sets dull and grainy instead of satiny.
- Baker's Premium No. 1The company's unsweetened baking chocolate. Two ounces of it in a cup of fondant gives a dark-coloured coating; all the sugar comes from the fondant.
- Essence of peppermintIn period usage this was normally oil of peppermint dissolved in alcohol, stronger than modern peppermint extract. Add it a little at a time and taste, since the recipe only says 'to taste'.
- Color-pasteConcentrated paste food coloring, chosen because it tints without thinning the fondant. Liquid supermarket coloring adds water and can make the fondant slack; gel colors are the modern equivalent.
- The teaspoonful of boiling waterThis is what keeps the chocolate-fondant coating fluid enough to dip in. Add it and no more; extra water will seize the mixture into a stiff paste.
- Oil clothWaxed paper, parchment, or a silicone mat all serve. Oilcloth was a common wipe-clean surface in kitchens of the period.
- Drying the centersThe hour in a cool place lets a thin crust form on the peppermint rounds so they hold their shape in the warm coating. Skip it and the centers slump and smear the chocolate.
- The fig bonbonsSteam the trimmed figs with water or sherry until soft, chop with the walnuts, stiffen with powdered sugar, roll into balls, then coat in the same chocolate-fondant. The '"Dot" Chocolate' named appears to be a proprietary coating chocolate; any tempered dark couverture stands in.
Walter Baker & Co. published Choice Recipes as advertising, and its confectionery pages reflect the American home candy-making boom of the turn of the century, when fondant work moved out of professional confectioners' shops and into domestic kitchens equipped with a candy thermometer and a marble slab. Peppermint creams dipped in dark chocolate were the simplest entry point into that craft, needing no molds and no tempering skill beyond keeping the pot over hot water. The fig-and-nut center belongs to the same tradition of "stuffed and dipped" bonbons — dates, figs, cherries, and candied ginger were all coated this way — and the sherry in the steaming liquid is a reminder that a bottle of cooking wine was unremarkable in the pre-Prohibition household kitchen.